


Gossamer Rain

by Shirokokuro



Series: If That Happens, I'll Catch You [12]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Also me: Nooo because I'm evil, Amnesia, Angst, Batdad, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Canon-Typical Violence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is a Good Son and We Respect Him, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Me: Are you gonna wash your hands after writing that ending?, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Reunions, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Tim is #best detective, Whump with plot, bruce's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 17:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shirokokuro/pseuds/Shirokokuro
Summary: In which Tim remembers everyone, but no one remembers Tim.





	Gossamer Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This plot is an extension of Red Robin #23-26. If you haven't read them, you can still follow the plot of this just fine, but those comic issues do play a background role in this.
> 
> Also, [Plume39](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plume39) was kind enough to do a [translation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22494109) in Chinese of this story! Feel free to send them some love for all their hard work! <3

_It’s like standing in a pool of light, like looking at the sun. There’s no smell, just pure oxygen as if each inhale is filtered through a rebreather, crisp and clean._

_Bruce is aware there’s ground under him. When he looks, though, there’s nothing there. No texture, no color. Like standing on glass and looking through to see clouds._

_The air swirls, a subtle shift that tugs and pulls at the white in front of him. It draws Bruce’s attention back up. The film of the atmosphere stretches thin enough that a shadow fades in in the distance, so far away that it’s greyed over like a star that’s fading into sunrise. The skin around Bruce’s eyes pull together when he squints. The figure doesn’t grow clearer._

_“Who are you?” Bruce asks._

_There’s the vestige of a sad smile despite the faceless figure. Words as well, but it’s as if all sounds are being snatched and deafened and drowned; nothing comes through._

_“Who are you?” Bruce finds himself asking again, an emotion there in his voice he can’t identify._

_A few more words slip by. An apology is all that comes through, and even then, Bruce imagines the words more than he hears them. The distance between the both of them is still too vast, a faraway echo in a soundproof room. A hue of eyes are watching him, softened in something he can only liken to sorrow, and the person continues speaking. Conveying a story. A life. A name. Bruce would give anything to understand even that much._

_“I know you,” Bruce says to empty space, the words echoing back to him. It’s surprising how the moment the sentence is spoken Bruce isn’t sure he believes it anymore._

_The figure must realize this, the peaceful air turning sympathetic, but the smile never falters. There’s a hurt there, a throb in the shift of light over eclipsed eyes. “No,” the form admits, and the words shimmer and die the moment they’re spoken. “You don’t know me, Bruce…”_

_There’s more to that sentence._

_Bruce knows there is._

_He tries to give chase because his thighs are coiled with the need to investigate and the instinct’s burning him alive. Of course, it’s not until that moment, always the instant he moves to sprint, that he remembers._

_This is a dream. And Bruce already knows how it ends._

_It’s always the same. The air tenses and twists and traps him the moment he takes another step, the ground beneath him shattering at the footfall, and everything slips upward_. I know you, _he keeps thinking, trying to remember, but it’s already too late._ He’s on his back.

Back at the Manor. Back at home.

And it really is the same every time.

The second Bruce springs up with open eyes, the dream’s already gone from his memory.

* * *

Bruce has rationalized it in fifty different ways: lack of sleep, trick of the eyes, hyper-vigilance. They’re all stupid suspicions, but Bruce can’t think of much else to explain the strange feeling nagging at the back of his brain, the kind you get when you walk into a room and forget why you walked in. It leaves Bruce scrutinizing the tea of a local café like the solution’s hidden in the leaves or the steam. As usual, no answer comes—all excluding the arched brow of the redhead across from him.

“This just in,” Vicki Vale mocks dryly. “Local bachelor falls for Earl Grey. Children to be christened Jasmine and Chamomile.”

Bruce slips on an amused smirk to show he’s still present, even though he truly isn’t. “Sorry. I’ve just had a lot of things on my mind lately. That dress, for one thing.”

“I’m going to pretend I haven’t heard that one before,” Vicki grouses in turn. She’s been tapping the back of her pen against a notepad for three minutes now. It’s mostly blank. She’s going to fix that soon, Bruce surmises, a sly transition to something worthy of the morning paper. “Although I can imagine why you’d be so distracted,” the reporter starts, just as predicted, “with, what? Three kids? Dick, Cassandra, and…?”

“Damian,” Bruce finishes on autopilot. Something feels like it’s missing there too, another word, another name, another _something_ on the tip of his tongue. No one knows about Jason being alive; that might explain the feeling of absence. And yet, there’s a persistent prod insisting that it’s because of something else. Something obvious. Bruce spares a second pursuing the thought, but it’s already long gone. He takes another draft of tea to get his mind back in order. “The three of them keep me pretty busy, for sure,” the man continues once he swallows. “But frankly, I wouldn’t dare trouble you with the details. Instead, why don’t you tell me more about what a gorgeous woman like you’s been doing with her free time?”

The reporter’s eyes thin at the dodge. “Just trying to make an honest living. And speaking of making a living, I hear there have been some changes going on at Wayne Enterprises. A new branch for…”

And Bruce tries to focus on the words, registers them somewhere—He does. But something calls to him right outside the café window then, a whisper in his ear the same as déjà vu. Maybe it’s paranoia from his nightly activities. Maybe it’s a fever dream. It feels as though it can’t be either, however, because right now is the epitome of normalcy: Throngs of people are passing by immediately outside the window along the sidewalk, all work clothes and phone calls and high heel clicks. The world above the skyscrapers is a burst of midday blue.

Normal.

Bruce searches passerby for a familiar face anyway, scans for something that fits and makes sense, because whatever version of “normal” this is feels...incomplete. A few seconds pass, and Bruce makes to turn back. _It was just my imagination_ , he decides, tries to ground himself in the citrus scent of pekoe and the leafing of a paperback’s page from across the room.

That’s when something flickers in his peripherals outside the window, something diaphanous as clouds over moons or a pin drop in a clamor.

Bruce barely notices the squeak of his chair when he jumps up or the couple he almost bowls over when he bursts out of the café entrance. His heart’s hot with adrenaline—with realization—but the epiphany’s slipping away as fast as it’s hit.

“What happened?” Vicki pants as she bolts up beside him, pen and paper in hand. 

“I thought I—” Bruce starts, stunned, but the words fade the moment they leave his lips. He doesn’t even know how to explain what he saw. It was like seeing someone from another life that he can barely remember yet still recognizes. Only now, Bruce can’t remember for the life of him what he saw, only has the vague impression of remembering imprinted on his mind.

It’s crazy, Bruce labels, reigns himself back in. It’s—

“It’s nothing.”

And just like that, Bruce tears his eyes away from across the street. Vicki looks like she’s about to press him, but he cuts her off. “Let’s go back inside.”

The entire day Bruce keeps reminding himself he didn’t see anything. It was the glare off the window, the light caught on a passerby’s watch. The explanations are myriad, and Bruce is so resolute that he almost convinces himself one of them is the truth. It’s not until later that night, swathed in the darkness of the cave and the glow of computers, that Bruce gives in and checks the surveillance cameras. Just to see. He memorizes the people walking. The faces. The buzz. He breathes each time he sees himself burst out onto the street. And in the end, he’s right: It really is nothing.

There’s no one there.

* * *

"What is it, Nightwing?” Bruce grunts, eyes still pinned to the building opposite them. They found reason to believe an arms deal is happening there tonight, an abandoned apartment complex used mainly by the Maroni’s. A few heat signatures are shifting in blurs of oranges and reds inside, a heartening sign their lead is good. Other than that, all looks quiet.

That is, until Dick shifts again, something obviously on his mind. “I dunno,” the man admits, face worked into something neighboring worry. “It’s just… Do you ever feel like something’s… _missing_?”

Bruce continues to keep his gaze focused. “Stonegate’s missing a few inmates,” he answers, shirks the question. He can feel Dick roll his eyes behind the white of his mask.

“You know what I mean, B. Something’s felt off for weeks now. Think of that robbery we ran across the other day—or that would-be homicide. Those things don’t get stopped on their own.”

Bruce drones in faint agreement. Dick does have a point: Those _were_ strange. All random events. No connection from what they could decipher. What was most pressing, though, was the fact that no one could ID the person who’d stepped in, all witnesses describing a different person. (Tall. Short. Teenaged. Elderly. Mask. No mask. The list went on.) One person even attested that they’d been blown out of danger by the wind, another by magic. For all Bruce knew, they very well could have been: The cameras only caught a vague blur just at the point of contact on the would-be-victim, like the image of a hand or an arm had been snipped clean out.

“Things have been…strange, yes,” Bruce acquiesces reluctantly. “But Oracle’s doing what she can to look into any cloaking. All we can do is be patient and—”

“Vigilant. I know,” Dick finishes, resting his chin on his palm with a look of dismay. “I just can’t help it. These things bother me.”

Bruce sighs through his nose, partially sympathetic, partially tolerant. There’s no point in throwing gasoline on Dick’s fire by telling him Bruce’s own thoughts, telling him about the café the other day or the sleepless nights he’s been having. They need to keep their heads about them right now, and there’s no time, anyway. The heat signatures in the apartment move, scramble. It’s an erratic kind, like they’re being thrown around and there’s something moving them.

“Let’s go,” Bruce says, and five seconds later, both he and Dick are crashing through the windows of the apartment. The latter rolls to his feet, escrima sticks in hand with a stern expression, but his face quickly falls. Everyone’s already down. The guns are untouched, strewn across the floor.

“What on earth…?” Dick mutters, shifting back to a stand as he surveys the damage. No one’s dead, just broken and moaning as they come back to. Some of the tiles in the floor are cracked, and a picture frame is shattered on the floor at the younger man’s feet. Dick picks it up. The photo inside is missing.

It’s a short scan of the room that reveals the door leading outside the apartment’s still open—an exit route, and that has Bruce flicking the thermal imaging back on. A number of people live in the complex, so as expected, bursts of carmine dance above and below him. There’s one that’s different, though. Distance is making the form fade, but Bruce can still make it out. It’s an outline of green that must be from excess body heat, the inside not colored in with the usual reds and oranges.

The silhouette’s in the shape of a person.

“Keep watch until the police come,” is all Bruce says to Dick before he’s hurtling himself back out the window. The person is making for the roof, so a line is shot up to pull Bruce in the right direction. It’s disorienting to suss out the green contour among the visual noise, the vigilante losing sight of it for a fraction of a second before he pinpoints it again higher up. The signature’s streaking over the roof a head tilt above.

“Stop!” Bruce barks, immediately on the shadow’s heels. The warning is tossed aside, and that’s permission to keep up the chase. Whoever they are, they’re familiar with the area—with Gotham, as the moment Bruce is only a few strides behind, the shadow swivels and jumps to run the length of a clothesline that sends fabric flying. They’re small distractions, inconveniences that throw him, but they aren’t particularly hostile, only calculated. There’s something oddly nostalgic about it for some reason; it’s as if this person knows how Bruce thinks.

In the end, it’s a five-minute-long sprint over tenements before Bruce can make it personal. A batarang toss closes the gap, and there it is again: The figure rolls underneath it, like it knew Bruce would do that. It’s unnerving but not as unnerving as Bruce feels when he continues rushing forward, expecting the person to take shape from proximity only they don’t. They remain reduced to a haze, a distortion in space that blurs at the edges the way ink does on skin, spiders out of the contours in sharp lines.

 _Cloaking_ , Bruce concludes, catching the batarang on its return before he roundhouses. The figure dances away, perfectly timed and scarcely out of reach, and this person has Bruce down textbook, knows how he moves and how to counter. The conclusion pricks on Bruce’s wind-beaten skin, because this feels like sparring with Dick or Damian or Cass, the way it used to feel with Jason. It feels like fighting a ghost.

In some ways, that’s what this is.

The form has no smell in the same way water doesn’t. It makes no sound, either. No pants from exertion, no snap of a cape that Bruce swears he senses just past his nose when the figure flips. When it lands, there are faint circles of dust that halo footprints and nothing more.

“What are you?” Bruce asks in a lull.

There isn’t an answer. Only the green glow from where Bruce still has the thermal vision on, a pink puff of breath that mantles what must be a face. The exhale’s jagged, as if there are syllables seized in the heat. No words come.

The form wavers after a long moment, lists one direction, and Bruce knows a feint when he sees one. A leap pushes him into the figure’s sphere, a hand loosening a line of his grapnel. This stranger might know his moves, but Bruce can improvise, play dirtier than he normally does. There’s still no smell, no sound—not even from this close, but there’s a gasp of displaced oxygen that Bruce can feel warm the air when he loops the line around an ankle and yanks.

The green contour slams back into the roof. It tries to catch itself on the parapet, but the wall slides between its torso and arm and there’s a jerk to a shoulder joint that Bruce can imagine hearing pop. He still can’t, though, and he wants to know why.

Bruce's hand grips what feels like a mask, pulls it off easily; the form doesn’t even struggle this time. The outline of a nose is turned to the side like it can’t watch, and Bruce—He still doesn’t understand. Because he’s holding a mask that flickers into color, an aquiline beak in black, but the form still doesn’t have a face, just a scintillating silhouette like a glitch on a monitor.

“What happened to you?” Bruce restates, gruff and blunt while secretly horrified into awe. It’s kin to sympathy, what he’s feeling, an emotion he reserves for the metas they meet, for the villains, even, because more often than not, they didn’t ask for the power they got and it turns out to be more curse than gift.

Another exhalation cloud escapes, choppy again, trying to explain but failing, so Bruce reaches out. He knows his hand won’t slip through (The person’s solid.), but he’s still removed his glove. He’s curious to know if there’s actually heat from the person, to know what sensation comes from moving into their space. It’s strange when he does, like touching the cool finish of tile, but heat rapidly pushes out the chill and it shows in an anthesis of thermal red right where Bruce’s fingers are. He thinks it might be a reaction, dangerous, incendiary. A voice comes through—

“—happen again and you won’t—"

—and Bruce retracts his fingers. The words cut off while the heat fades back into a green outline, simple and unrevealing. It leaves Bruce staring at the space. The figure hasn’t moved, face still turned away, and the contour shivers, almost like it’s grown cold from isolation. Bruce knows the tremor is just from the cloaking, but that fact doesn’t keep him from shifting forward again.

Fingers cut through the distance once more while Bruce’s other hand flicks off the infrared. The man is expecting it now, but the burst of warmth that greets his fingertips is still a surprise. Even more shocking is the bloom of color that variegates the point of contact. Bruce can see it all in detail now, the hues seeping outward like tea leaves in water, and Bruce almost pulls his hand away again.

He’s stuck, though. Can’t move.

The now-visible face might as well kick him in the gut, hit him in his head, because a fog of thoughts are jarred and cleared. Photographs of memories weaving together, events altering to account for another figure. Gaps after Jason’s death click into place. Everything from Bane to being lost in time. Questions Bruce didn’t even know he had suddenly appear with the answers in tow.

It all makes sense now: his own life.

The last edges of the person are filtering through at this point, radiating outward from the spot where Bruce’s hand is resting against the rouged skin of a cheekbone. Blue eyes (They’re blue, Bruce knows.) remain closed, the dust of lashes forming a line in profile, and the young man’s mouth is pulled tight in a permanent wince.

“Tim…” Bruce says, half question, half statement. The name rises from his throat almost of its own volition.

His son doesn’t reply, but for whatever reason, his expression grows more pained, almost tortured.

“Tim,” Bruce repeats. It’s surprisingly easy to slip his thumb down so that his hand is bracketing the underside of the younger man’s jaw. He guides it to face him. “What happened to you?”

Tim finally opens his eyes, a short flash of eyelids being pulled back, and Bruce gets lost in them for a minute, because he’s struck with relief. The world rights itself, everything that once was off kilter corrected, and that one missing puzzle piece in Bruce’s existence snaps into place like it was always meant to be. A complete picture. The result’s euphoric.

But the euphoria fades fast.

Tim doesn’t look relieved. Doesn’t look anything past harboring a deep-seated hurt. Bruce wonders if he’s still upset about Boomerang, because that was the last interaction they really had outside of work, outside of formal meetings, public speeches, and passing each other off as father and son despite the faint resentment nursed on both sides.

Tim was on his way back to Cairo last Bruce heard. He’d mentioned it on a business trip to Montreal two months ago. “Following a lead on Scarab,” the young man explained, laying the factoid down bluntly without once glancing up from the email he was typing. It was a characterizing feature of the entire trip: avoidance.

Apparently that hasn’t changed.

Bruce removes his hand from Tim’s jaw, shifting the contact to the boy’s knee instead. The colors start to dissolve back out of his form in the interim before filtering back, like Tim needs the touch to ground him here. Keep him visible.

“I don’t have time for this,” Tim says, not angry, not short. Just detached in a defeated way. He moves to stand up, and Bruce would stop him if it weren’t for the fact Tim’s shoulder beats him to it. It’s probably dislocated. The pain is enough to earn a hiss. “I’m on the clock. Need to go.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Tim’s expression hardens past the pain, facing Bruce again. He’s still gripping his shoulder from underneath his cape, and he guides the limb behind his head until the bone pops back into place. The boy’s nose crinkles when it does—sounds awful. Bruce would be more commiserating if it weren’t for the fact that his son’s been missing for two months and no one’s…

No one’s noticed.

With a long exhale, Tim lets his arm relax back against his side. “I already _have_ told you, alright?”

Tim hasn’t told him. He hasn’t told him anything.

“What are you talking about?”

Tim pauses for an eternity, searching Bruce’s face before the boy’s countenance crumples and he shakes his head. “I really need to go. I’m in the middle of something, and I can’t screw it up.” He pulls a piece of paper out from a pouch in his belt, a photograph now that Bruce looks closer. It must be the one from the crime scene earlier. “Each clue leads to the next. If I miss one, I’m toast. So just let me go.”

“You’ve still got time,” Bruce replies once he processes the picture. It’s of a family out by the riverside—Coslett Street—and the time the photo was taken is stamped into the corner. Two o’clock, it says. That’d be forty minutes from now in the a.m., and Coslett’s only twenty away from here on foot. “Explain.”

For someone in a time crunch, Tim is hesitant to say anything. He looks anywhere but at Bruce, and it stings a bit to think that his son isn’t more relieved to see him. Tim is back, and Bruce is here, and that… That should make a difference, right? And yet, Tim continues to look like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“It’s that Assassination Tournament I was looking into,” Tim gives up a few seconds later, running a hand through his hair. (It’s gotten longer since they last met.) “The mastermind of it’s taken a liking to me. Made a whole gauntlet for me to run and everything on our home turf, no help wanted. Cameras don’t pick up on me. People too… It’s like I’ve just been deleted out of my own life.” Tim snorts mirthlessly. “Don’t even know if it’s magic or tech that’s been used on me. Maybe both. As far as I can tell, the only way to get the cure is to play their game.”

“And if you should lose?”

Tim glances up, eyes flashing again. The silence is answer enough: He’d be stuck this way.

“…Then I’m coming with you.”

Tim winces from something that isn’t pain ( _Why does he keep doing that?_ ), taking his mask back and working it over his head. Bruce is glad that he doesn’t pull it up over his face yet. “No, you’re not coming.”

“Why’s that?” Bruce demands. He can tell Tim’s keeping something from him, not being honest in a way that’s important. It’s written all over the boy’s posture: His torso is rolled away from him, protective, and the position makes Tim look younger than he really is—It always has. Bruce squeezes his knee in silent encouragement, maybe in threat. _I’m not leaving until you tell me._

“You’re not coming, because we’ve already tried, B.” ( _That’s...not possible.)_ But Tim’s voice is steady as it is true. “It never works. The minute we split up, you forget. It’s how it always goes. Whatever's on me is just too strong.”

Bruce feels his stomach drop. Tim is looking at him flatly, burnt-out, as if this is a conversation they’ve had dozens of times, only Bruce can't recall a single one.

“Tim… How many times have we found you?”

The boy bites his lip, a death sentence in the form of a nervous tick. “Dick found me once,” he offers tentatively. “Damian too. But you…?” Bruce waits. “This would be the seventh time.”

Considering how careful Tim is, it’s a devastating amount. Seven times of being found, of explaining this. Bruce’s mind is filling in the gaps. He imagines Tim coming to them as soon as this started only to find himself invisible, voice silent as a specter, and even when Tim could, when he figured out how this worked, the boy found himself forgotten all over again. Over and over.

“So it’s just easier if I go it alone, okay?” Tim finishes, sounding broken. Bruce opens his mouth to reply, a thousand thoughts on the tip of his tongue that get stolen by the roar of an alarm from nearby. The whirl picks up and dies—The alarm bell was likely cut. Dick should still be waiting for the police or, at least, is a few minutes behind; Tim has somewhere to be; and Damian and Stephanie are investigating a string of homicides in Bristol on the mainland. Bruce is the only one near enough with time to spare.

“You should go,” Tim says, and his mouth turns sideways in mute disappointment. “I’ve spent too much time here, anyway.”

Bruce extends a hand to help the boy up, careful to watch his shoulder. He’d help treat it if they had time to spare, but he only has enough to set one thing right. “I’ll be there.” Tim flinches in surprise. “Coslett Street at two. I’ll remember.”

Tim doesn’t look like he’s bought it at all, is just going through the motions. Bruce wonders if the boy has heard this same promise before. It smarts when Bruce realizes he probably has.

“Alright,” Tim agrees jadedly. He’s on his feet now, teeth ground together to bite back the ache in his shoulder, and he still lists a bit. Bruce keeps a hand on his good forearm just in case. The man’s trying to think of a way to get through to his son that he’s serious, trying to think of something to say, but maybe words aren’t enough.

“I won’t forget, Tim.”

Tim sighs, routine and dubious, but the wonted nature of the gesture vanishes when Bruce pulls him a step closer into his space. It’s obvious from the way Tim stiffens that this isn’t something Bruce has done before, because it takes a second for his son to loosen enough to return the embrace.

“I won’t,” Bruce repeats into the boy’s hair. It smells clean, like castor oil and lemongrass, and he focuses on the scent and who it signifies. There’s a sneaking feeling that as soon as Bruce lets go, memories will start to fade away. _Tim_ will fade away. He’s determined not to let that come to pass, so here Bruce is, memorizing the tone of his son’s voice and the way he hugs back fiercer than anyone Bruce knows, almost desperate, like the boy knows it could always be the last. “I promise.”

Tim nods weakly against his collarbone. Bruce thinks the boy believes him, hopes he does, but Bruce doesn’t have time to ask. The sound of shattering glass bursts from across the alleyway, breaking the moment. It reminds them both that they can’t linger here.

Tim separates from him instantly, slipping apart like water on oil, and he turns and runs in the direction of the riverside. They’re both on the clock for this—no time for goodbyes, for hesitation. Bruce still notes when Tim slows to a stop over the ledge. The teenager angles back, looking over his shoulder. The color of him is evanescing into air already, and it’s like necrosis, like a part of Bruce is dying and if he loses it, he’s not sure he’ll ever get it back.

“See you later,” Tim says, a heft to the words. The glint is fading out of his hair even before he pulls his mask up, and a moment later, the boy’s dissolved between the buildings.

Bruce bolts off in the opposite direction. There’s guilt in the fact that he’s jumping into the fray while Tim’s descending into a no man’s land. It makes Bruce quick, galvanizes his steps as he swings down to the delicatessen that’s being robbed. No time to waste. It's not a moment later that bodies smash out of store windows and against shelves, scramble across the street before their ankles are tied up in bolas. Bruce isn’t paying the fight much attention. This is all instinctual, auto-pilot, because his brain is running over a promise he made and a person who’s dear to him.

It takes three minutes.

“Looks like you didn’t need me after all,” a voice echoes through the store. Bruce is cuffing the last of the assailants, barely looking up to see Dick leaned against the entrance’s doorjamb. The younger man’s sporting a sly smile, and the aisle lights reflect smoothly across the blue of his uniform.

Bruce doesn’t reply. He watches the ghost of his own shadow shimmer along the linoleum, like there’s something chasing him. Something he’s forgetting.

Dick whistles to himself to fill the silence. “A gun bust _and_ a meal all in one night. Don’t think it gets much better than this.” He throws a ten on the counter, considering the meats and cheeses before glancing back Bruce’s way. He straightens. “You alright, boss? You look a bit…lost.”

That’s not far off the mark. Bruce feels torn. He caught the bad guys, did everything right. But it still feels like he’s let someone down and he’s not sure why. “Is there something we were supposed to do tonight?”

Dick raises an eyebrow, a small perk along the black of his domino. “Well, we did promise Alfred to be home early. We’ve both been working pretty hard.”

“Alfred,” Bruce repeats to himself, still feeling out of it.

That has to be what’s hounding him.

And in the same stroke, it doesn’t feel like that’s it at all.

A hand slides onto Bruce’s shoulder, a light touch that he recognizes as his eldest’s. “Let’s go home,” Dick says, concern stitched into the words. “You look like you could use some rest.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees emptily, trying to convince himself that’s what this is—just exhaustion. His gut continues to nag him that something’s wrong, though, that something’s…something’s _missing,_ and the entire way home he can’t figure out why his costume smells faintly of lemongrass.

* * *

_"Who are you?!”_

_Bruce’s voice is hoarse from having asked the same question, shouted it over miles and miles of an anodyne dream. The same silhouette lingers on the horizon, a drop of rain dusked by gossamer, and Bruce has had enough: He has to get closer, has to know._

_The man moves one foot forward, forces himself through the haze, because he can shoulder his way through most things in life. Just not this._

_“I’m sorry,” a voice says, right before the floor breaks and the dream ends the same way it always does. Bruce struggles regardless to stay asleep one moment longer. He needs to know what the figure tells him, needs to understand the sorry cadence and why it makes him feel sorry too._

_“I know you!” Bruce insists, and the figure responds, sad as a eulogy before a burial. The words carry on the piercing shatter of the dream, on the rush of falling that mimics dread because Bruce doesn’t want this._

_“No… You don’t know me, Bruce,” the voice muses, even as it slips away. “You can’t.”_


End file.
